Evan McKenzie on the rise of private urban governance and the law of homeowner and condominium associations. Visit evanmckenzie.wikispaces.com for my published articles and services.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

trialog zeitschrift für stadtplanung frameset-dateiFrom Elisabeth Peyroux comes the announcement of this new issue of the journal Trialog, which is about "Controlling Urban Space. The Rise of New Actors." That includes all the friendly little neighborhood HOAs and other "new actors."

Nov. 23, 2006- City panel OKs preferred plant list......in order to become more like an HOA?Thanks to Fred Pilot for this link. By "plant," they mean the vegetation sort, not the nuclear kind. Actually, some of this is common sense as they are trying to keep out invasive species. Kudzu, anybody?

HOAs Gone Wild - Part 1 | HOA Nut HouseCheck out this local news broadcast from Texas, linked from HOA News Network and sent to me by a bunch of people (thanks to Shu, Fred, and Beanie). When the local newscast is onto your game, you aren't fooling a whole lot of people.

Monday, November 20, 2006

Home Sales Fall in 38 States, Data Shows The feeble U.S. housing market showed more frailty in October when home sales plummeted in 38 states, hitting Nevada, Arizona, Florida and California particularly hard, government data showed on Monday.-------------And by a strange coincidence, these are four states where the new housing stock is almost entirely common interest housing.

Appearance on "On the Commons"It was fun talking with Shu Bartholomew Saturday afternoon on her radio program, , "On the Commons." That follows on the heels of speaking at the inaugural conference of Marjorie Murray's new organization,Center for California Homeowner Association Law, which I think is performing a great service to the CID owners in California. But all this generated the predictable round of outrage from the HOA abolitionists. Anybody who proposes any realistic reform to make life a little better in HOAs gets attacked by the same cadre of abolitionists, who claim to hate everything about HOA living but apparently choose to live in them anyway. I suggest that measures should be taken to make sure that HOAs remain solvent, and the usual folks vent their spleen. They want to de-fund all the HOAs so they collapse. But as I was explaining, that just leads to court-appointed receivers, court-ordered special assessments, and owners who have to pay up anyway. The question these "let them go belly-up" folks should be made to answer is this: "Which causes more unhappiness in a homeowners life: (a) being told to paint their door a different color; or (b) being ordered to pay $20,000 within 30 days, because their HOA has debts but no money?" If you really care about the millions of people who live in HOAs (versus just having an issue to self-righteously pontificate about), you want those owners to be protected against massive financial liability. That would mean supporting measures that keep these associations from becoming insolvent. Unlike the savings and loan crisis, where the billions of dollars in depositor losses were protected by federal depository insurance, CID owners are on their own.

Sunday, November 19, 2006

The weary mother of three, wearing hand-me-down sweatpants and a faded T-shirt, nearly dropped the basket of clothes when she saw the notice on the aging apartment complex laundry door in Santa Ana. The thick capital letters seemed to speak directly to her: "ALL CHILDREN WILL NO LONGER BE ALLOWED TO PLAY OUTSIDE … " Maria Gomez, 33, scurried back to her two-bedroom apartment and her three children, ages 7, 9 and 13, with the news. Her mind flashed back to when her last landlord evicted the family for breaking similar rules. Gomez, like thousands of others across Southern California, lives in an apartment complex that caters to large immigrant families and bans children from playing on apartment grounds. Landlords impose fines and even evict tenants whose children play outside. Even though such punishments often violate housing laws, tenants say they feel powerless to complain for fear of losing their apartment or — in some cases — having their illegal immigration status exposed.